journal features

king street pilot is permanent

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2019.04.16

Every day I cross the center of Toronto's downtown via street only usable by transit, taxis and bikes - not a big idea globally but new to TO. This was put in place as a "pilot" to verify the idea, and the pilot seems to have worked because today city council voted to make the street's design permanent.

I'd like to thank all of the Councillors who voted for this, it directly makes a difference to my safety.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton